Monday, March 12, 2018

I've been reading elite bashing of working class and rural whites for years now, and I published my first article about it as long as 2011. But the election of 2016 brought this bashing by the chattering classes to a fever pitch, and I've occasionally blogged about the phenomenon, as here and here.

One "series" I see on Twitter begins: "And in today's episode of: I Bet I Know Who You Voted For..." That is the common preface to re-Tweets of headlines that could previously have appeared in the "Darwin Awards" or perhaps the petty crime pages of a local paper. I'm pasting one below. It re-Tweets a Fox News Tweet that reads "Substitute allegedly brought boxed wine to school, vomited in class."

On a related note, here's an item from Instagram just a few days ago, from the account called guerrillafeminism that reads "happy international women's day except the 53% of white women who voted for trump."

Pat Bagley, the cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune (whose work I greatly admire, by the way), has referred to Trump's "idiot followers."

With that background, you can imagine my surprise--but also delight--when I saw this Tweet from Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress, which bills itself as an

independent nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Our aim is not just to change the conversation, but to change the country.

Despite the "nonpartisan" billing, I see it as clearly left leaning (a good thing in my book!). Tanden's Tweet reads:

The teachers of West Virginia are heroes. They deserve good pay and a real raise. I stand with them.

Now, I don't recall any past Tweets by Tanden blasting Trump supporters, though I do recall some highly critical of Trump. That's a line I've drawn myself--at least in the last year or so (I was a bit less discriminating--a bit more knee jerk--as I reeled in the wake of election of 2016) I readily take aim at Trump but try to be more thoughtful and circumspect re: Trump supporters. I'm looking to understand them, trying to listen empathically. (I've got a whole law review article forthcoming about female Trump supporters, delivered as the key note address at the Toledo Law Review symposium in October, 2017; hope to have the text posted soon on my ssrn.com page).

But the bottom line is that some things I saw on Twitter about the West Virginia teachers--many sympathetic comments of the sort Tanden shared--had me wondering if the lefties doing this Tweeting realized that many of the folks they were lauding and advocating for had no doubt voted for Trump. That is, these newfound labor heroes with their wild-cat strike were one and the same with (many) reviled Trump voters. Some 68% of West Virginians voted for Trump! Could I possibly be seeing praise for these women--praise from the left? These are the same women that many lefties on Twitter have said "get what they deserve" if they lose their healthcare (thanks to Trump's effort to dismantle Obamacare) or face further economic decline (thanks, for example, to the long-term consequences of Trump's tax reform law).

(Btw, I was at an Appalachian Justice symposium at West Virginia University College of Law in Morgantown from Thursday Feb. 22 'til Saturday Feb. 24th, and I got to see the picketing--and hear the honking in support--first-hand, which was pretty cool. One of my favorite signs, this published in the Washington Post, is below )

Michelle Goldberg, a relatively new columnist at the New York Times who is writing a lot about gender issues, offered up this column under the headline, "The Teachers Revolt in West Virginia." She called the strike "thrilling," noting that strikes by teachers are unlawful in West Virginia, which became a right-to-work state a few years ago, and where unions do not have collective bargaining rights. Yet, Goldberg writes,

teachers and some other school employees in all of the state’s 55 counties are refusing to return to work until lawmakers give them a 5 percent raise, and commit to addressing their rapidly rising health insurance premiums.

Goldberg further explains that the "obvious impetus" for action is West Virginia's awful pay of teachers, which ranks 48th in the nation (read more analysis here). She also discusses the critical role that health care/health insurance plays in the labor dispute:

In the past, solid health care benefits helped make up for low wages, but because West Virginia hasn’t been putting enough money into the state agency that insures public employees, premiums and co-payments have been increasing significantly.

Ah, there's that health care problem again, by which I mean you should read this and this, among other sources cited and discussed in my forthcoming Toledo Law Review article.

Having pored over many, many mainstream media reports of white working class Trump supporters in places like Appalachia (you guess it, all in that article forthcoming in the Toledo Law Review), I was struck by the women Goldberg identified and interviewed who did not appear to be Trump supporters. Quite to the contrary, these women are held out as having responded to Trump's election by becoming part of what is popularly known as "the resistance." I was delighted to learn about and hear from these women, but was Goldberg unable to find any Trump supporters among the striking teachers? I would very much have liked to have heard their attitudes about the strike, also in relation to their support for Trump. Did they reconcile the two?

Craig described the anti-Trump Women’s March, as well as the explosion of local political organizing that followed it, as a “catalyst” for at least some striking teachers. “You have women now taking leadership roles in unionizing, in standing up, in leading initiatives for fairness and equality and justice for everyone,” she said.

Garvin commented:

As a profession, we’re largely made up of women. ... There are a bunch of men sitting in an office right now telling us that we don’t deserve anything better.

Oh how I LOVE that quote. In the wake of Trump’s election, Garvin added, women are standing up to say:

No. We’re equal here.

I sure hope Garvin is right that the sentiment and movement are as widespread as she suggests--and Goldberg implies. If this is accurate, liberal elites--including feminists--will have to give Craig, Garvin and so many more like them their due. (Indeed, teacher strikes may be in the works in the equally "red" states of Oklahoma and Kentucky, too). That will challenge deeply entrenched stereotypes about folks from this region (read more here and here), which will in turn serve all of us quite well.

You can find more exciting coverage of the West Virginia teachers strike here, here and here. And don't miss this by WVU Law Professor and education law expert, Joshua Weishart.

By the way, the strike succeeded, with the teachers getting what they held out for.

The question that all of this leaves me with is this: What can the WV teachers strike teach us about how to build and sustain cross-class coalitions, including among whites? How can these intra-racial coalitions interface with cross-race coalitions for even stronger pacts among progressives? And what role will gender play in that coalition building?

Other hopeful news of change in relation to women and the national political landscape is here, here and here.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

I kicked off the "Working Class Whites and the Law" blog back in January with this post about the shortage of workers willing to do crappy work. This shortage is obviously integrally linked to immigration and should inform our nation's immigration policy. If native-born workers (of whatever color) are not available to do the work that needs to be done to keep our economy(ies) booming, then immigrant labor is a necessity if economies are to grow, or even tread water. And growth seems to be the buzzword of the era, whether or not the growth is sustainable and whether or not such growth is good for the planet.

Never mind those concerns. Two recent stories from two very different places--California and Missouri--illustrate the need for laborers.

First, the California story: well, could be any number of stories, but I'll settle on Darrell Steinberg's interview with NPR on Thursday morning, following Attorney General Jeff Sessions' speech to a group of law enforcement officers in Sacramento on Wednesday. Steinberg defended Sacramento's stance as a "sanctuary city" by noting that the municipality is standing up for immigrants who, among other things, contribute to the economy:

It's the people living in our communities that have lived here, by the way, for decades. These are people going to school, people going to college, people who are contributing to our tax base. And we have an obligation to stand up for those people. And that's exactly what we're going to do.

The Missouri story is datelined Branson, Missouri, population 10,520, the self-proclaimed "live entertainment capital of the world." The headline for the Washington Post story is "Why a white town paid for a class called "Hispanics 101'," and it is fundamentally about a labor shortage in southwest Missouri, a region I've frequently written about, e.g., here, here, here, here and here. (It's a place of great interest to me because I grew up a little more than an hour away, in northwest Arkansas). This Branson story, though by a different WaPo journalist, is somewhat similar in theme to this January report on a turkey processing plant in South Dakota recruiting Puerto Ricans to meet their labor needs. The angle on Danielle Paquette's story out of Branson is that employers there are having to develop cultural sensitivity in order to recruit and retain Latinx workers, with a recent focus on those from Puerto Rico. Here's an excerpt that explains that the economy depends on the success of the undertaking:

As tourism season kicks off this month, the remote getaway known for dinner theaters, country music concerts and a museum of dinosaur replicas has 2,050 vacancies — and a lack of locals applying.

So, like other areas with tight labor markets, Branson finds itself getting creative to fill jobs — in this case by recruiting people from a part of the United States with much higher unemployment.

But the plan to bring 1,000 workers from the island to overwhelmingly white, conservative Branson over the next three years has sparked unease, with critics saying that the newcomers will steal work from residents or drag down wages or bump up crime.

Paquette goes on to describe how desperate managers from Branson-area hotels, hospitals, hardware stores and banks have paid $50 each for the "Hispanic 101" workshop led by Miguel Joey Aviles. Hilariously, Aviles is teaching his students--among other things--how to dance the merengue.

Aviles advises bosses to check in often, ask about their mothers and request that grocery stores in the area sell plantains and Goya coconut water.

“It’s not enough to invite them to the party,” Aviles said, twisting his body to the beat. “Bring them to the dance floor.”

Paquette goes on to focus on Branson's whiteness, with these details:

[O]fficials acknowledge that some in the area, which is 92.4 percent white, are clinging to the past. Confederate flags adorn shop windows. A billboard outside town advertises “White Pride Radio.”

“We get nasty comments all the time,” said Heather Hardinger, programs director at the Taney County Partnership, which is working with the chamber on what it calls the “talent attraction” plan.

States and companies from across the United States are competing for Puerto Rican workers, which had a jobless rate of nearly 11% in 2017, the highest in the nation.

All of this highlights for me the gulf in understanding--broadly speaking--between California and Missouri, when it comes to the value--even necessity--of immigrant labor. I'm also wondering how to bridge that gulf. And I'm wondering--as I asked in that post back in early January--what happened to the good ol' working class whites who used to do jobs in places like Branson? Have they succumbed to the meth (or other drug) epidemic (or here)? gone soft? moved to the city? I'd like to know.

Friday, March 2, 2018

Addressing the resource gap between rural and urban areas is going to largely depend on two possible outcomes: rural students deciding to return home after college graduation to work in their communities and rural communities attracting new migrants. The latter is already a challenge for many rural communities and as it turns out, the former is as well. As a recent NPR article notes (and Professor Pruitt covered here), it's a challenge because rural students are attending college at a rate lower than their peers in other locations. Only 59% of rural students pursue post-secondary education, a rate that lags behind urban and suburban communities, which send 62% and 69% of their students to college respectively.

The article goes on to mention that 48% of people between 18 and 24 are enrolled in higher education but only 29% of rural people in that age range are enrolled. While the gap between the different geographies in terms people choosing to pursue higher education isn't that great, the low percentage of people that are enrolled points to a broader issue. I have no reputable study to confirm this theory but it would appear that rural students are remaining in and ultimately completing college at a far lower rate than their urban and suburban peers. This is also troubling.

As the NPR article notes and I've seen in other studies as well as anecdotally, a lot of rural students grow up in environments where their role models were able to make a living without a college education. Many of them may be unaware of the economic trends that have made a lot of these industries non-viable in the long term and may assume that they can pursue the same career with the same results. They may also see higher education and high status career as something that is unattainable for them, a fact particularly true in low-income communities. Of course, the rural lawyer shortage almost becomes a self-perpetuating cycle because many rural students may lack role models such as doctors or lawyers who can show them that these careers are possible.

Nebraska has realized the importance of addressing the rural lawyer shortage through taking steps to get rural students into classrooms. In 2016, the State of Nebraska created a scholarship program, the Rural Law Opportunities Program, which sends high achieving students to rural colleges in the state where upon completion (and obtaining a 3.5 GPA and a minimum LSAT score), they would earn a scholarship to the University of Nebraska Law.

In order to address the rural lawyer shortage, early intervention is sorely needed. Hopefully this data combined with the efforts already being undertaken in Nebraska can show the way to addressing this critical issue.

Monday, February 19, 2018

III. The Solution
What can be done to adequately address the three distinct but intertwined problems outlined
above? In order to adequately comply with the conditions of TOLA and VAWA and be able to
address the sexual assault epidemic sweeping their reservations, tribes and the federal
government will have to work together to find solutions that will enhance tribal sovereignty and
ensure long term sustainability.
a. Funding
The first pressing issue is funding. While a minority of tribes have successfully engaged in
profitable gaming enterprises, the majority are still reliant on federal government dollars to
provide even the most basic services. With tribes having little to no discretionary money,
Congress is going to have to step up and pass legislation that will fund the payment of lawyers
that can represent indigent defendants. On July 1, 2013, South Dakota began to address its rural
lawyer shortage by launching a program designed to offer financial incentives to recent
graduates who are willing to move to the remote rural regions of the state. Under this program,
participants would be entitled to “more than $13,000 a year for five years to practice in a rural
area that has been identified as being underrepresented47.” This program is even modeled on
similar programs that already exist within the federal government that are aimed at increasing the
number of medical professionals in rural areas48. If the federal government would extend these
programs to include legal professionals in underserved areas, it would go a long way towards
easing the burden on tribes to find funding to hire lawyers.

It should also be mentioned however that an exact copy of the South Dakota program would
not be sufficient for this problem. Since a $13,000 annual payment functions only as a subsidy,
there is still a financial burden on the employer. For an idea of how much tribes would have to
pay under this model, the average salary for an entry level public defender was $47,500 in
201049. This average does not take into account other fringe benefits that an employer could be
expected to provide. Many firms, even public interest firms, provide generous benefits packages
that can costs in the thousands of dollars for employers. In order to attract attorneys, it would be
expected that tribes would offer similar compensation packages.

Since an investment in a single lawyer can cost a tribe thousands of dollars, it would
stand to reason that exercising the extra jurisdiction allowed under the Tribal Law and Order Act
and VAWA will be a substantial financial undertaking. In order to assist tribes that are not able
to generate funding on their own, the federal government has to step up and provide more
financial resources to tribes so this can become an attainable goal. The fallacy in suggesting this
however is that it does nothing to address the earlier concern about tribes being overly dependent
on the whims of federal government funding. The Tribal Law and Order Act begins to address
these concerns by allowing the Legal Services Corporation to provide grants to tribes for non-
felony offenses, this power however is misplaced. The Legal Services Corporation is frequently
the subject of political battles and has frequently seen its funding dramatically cut and its
existence threatened altogether. Allowing the LSC to provide grants is a good start but it still
leaves tribes vulnerable to the whims of debate in Washington.

What should be done is the creation of an Indian Legal Services Unit within the Bureau of
Indian Affairs (or Department of Justice) that would be primarily responsible for assisting tribes
with complying with the provisions of the act that will afford them extra criminal jurisdiction.
Given the legal history of tribal jurisdiction, a separate unit could be staffed by people who are
experts in Indian Law who could even assist tribes as they attempt to comply with the act. How
does this affect funding? In creating the unit, Congress has to make a commitment to fund it for
at least five years. The legislation that creates the unit has to provide funding for a set period of
time and this funding cannot be cut in budget negotiations. By allowing for an extended period
of funding, the program can get started and begin providing funding to tribes without fear of
losing money on a year to year basis. In order to prevent wasteful spending, the unit would only
provide funding to tribes on a per-lawyer basis. In order to further incentivize working on a
reservation and helping to overcome any barriers that may be related to training and learning
new laws, the unit could also provide funding for any tribal bar exam related training. It can also
provide support for new tribal lawyers who are attempting to learn the laws of a new tribal
jurisdiction.

A separate unit would also assist with providing funding for law-trained judges. Since many
tribes already share judges, this unit could also assist with recruiting already active tribal judges
to work in underrepresented courts who may not otherwise be able to pay them. One way to
structure this would be to simply have judges be employees of the federal government who are
assigned to geographic “circuits,” which would be conscious of cultural differences between
tribes. It would go without saying that this unit would have to have field offices on reservations
so they could readily assist if any problems were to arise. The judges could work out of a regional field office and have that as their permanent office space or they could make other
arrangements with the tribal entities.

b. Attracting Lawyers
The federal government would also do well to look at the model cultivated by Teach for
America, a program which places high achieving college graduates in low income areas. While
Teach for America acts only as a placing service, it does provide some lessons for how to direct
people towards places that would be in need. Teach for America places students in some of the
toughest schools in some of the toughest areas in the country and has a decent success rate at
keeping people in their schools beyond the initial two year commitment. One methodology
employed by Teach for America that would be useful for the federal government would be a
centralized application that allows an applicant to apply and then be placed with an area in need
of their assistance. This eliminates the information asymmetry that exists where applicants may
not know of vacancies and thus never apply for them. Unlike Teach for America however, the
federal government should not make any hiring decisions. Having this kind of service would be
helpful because some of the more remote and impoverished reservations may not have an
adequate web presence or even a way to announce openings. The lack of a web presence creates
a situation in which many tribes may struggle attract attorneys who may otherwise be interested.
After all, you cannot apply for a job that you do not know exists.
What are the logistics for how this would function? As mentioned above, a separate entity
that deals exclusively with the compliance of this act should be created within the BIA or
Department of Justice. A prospective applicant can go a website, choose whether or not to
indicate a geographic preference and submit an application. An application can be taken even
when no openings are posted. The applicant’s information can go into a central database, which all tribes will have access to. When a tribe wants to fill a vacancy, it can submit a posting to the
website but also begin to review previously submitted applications. This process serves a couple
of purposes. First of all, it creates a central database of people interested in Indian law, but it also
creates a system where people may not otherwise seek out reservation jobs can submit an
application. Submitting an application online that will be available to all is a lot easier than
seeking out individual job openings. It also alleviates the financial burden that tribes would
usually incur when attempting to advertise a job opening. Instead of committing financial
resources to advertising an opening, a tribal entity could simply submit to a central database.

The Teach for America model also provides another lesson that the federal government
would be wise to heed. Once in the program, Teach for America will provide no-interest loans to
assist with relocation50. Relocation is a huge expense, particularly for someone moving to a
completely new location that can be hundreds, if not thousands of miles of home. Teach for
America also provide continued education and support to Corp members51. By providing these
things to lawyers, it helps make the move to a reservation much more financially feasible and
less isolating.
How successful is Teach for America? The results are mixed but slightly encouraging. A
2008 study conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that 43.6 percent of
Corp members remained in their low-income placement beyond the initial two year
commitment52. However, only 14.8 percent remained for more than four years53. It would be important for tribes to have consistency and low turnover. It is important for a couple of reasons.
Perhaps most importantly, more experienced attorneys are likely to be better advocates. They
have more experience, they know the judicial system and likely know the judges that they will be
practicing in front of. It is also important because of the requirement that tribes have law trained
judges. An experience tribal defense attorney could transition into being a judge later on in his or
her career.

How can tribes address the turnover problem that Teach for America encounters? By
introducing incentives to stay. The federal government already offers loan forgiveness for public
service through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF), which allows for the
forgiveness of student loans after 120 successful monthly payments as long the applicant is
employed in a qualifying public service job54. Monthly payments are further indexed to ten
percent of discretionary income55. Programs like this make it possible to work in the public
interest without risking bankruptcy. It is no secret that law students graduate with tremendously
high amounts of debt and often struggle to pay it back. For the federal government to attract
people to work on reservations however, they have to introduce loan forgiveness programs that
rival what is offered to medical professionals who undertake similar endeavors. For example,
Indian Health Services offers $40,000 (or $20,000 per year) in student loan forgiveness to
qualified professionals who make a two year commitment to working on a reservation56. To
attract lawyers to work on the reservation, the federal government could consider a similar
program. Offering $20,000 per year in loan forgiveness for every year that you work on the reservation would almost certainly result in loans being almost completely forgiven by the time
the ten year forgiveness period arrives. By offering graduates a chance at an even shorter
forgiveness schedule, working on a reservation becomes competitive with many other lines of
employment that lawyers may seek. The price of investment per lawyer is even a relative bargain
for the United States government. Even if you pay the median starting salary for a public
defender, you are still investing less than $70,000 per year per attorney.

There are also alternative methods that could be used to fill these positions. These methods
are less preferable however because they do little to address the problem of high turnover, but
they do provide attorneys in the short term. There are various fellowships that allow one to work
for a non-profit entity, often at the expense of an outside entity. These entities could form
partnerships with agencies that may already work to provide legal assistance to tribal members..
The federal government could further amend the Legal Services Act to allow for existing legal
aid organizations to provide criminal assistance to tribal members. This alleviates the burden of
tribes to find someone to fill the position while still ensuring that it is filled. There are other grant
programs but they often require matching funds to exist. The federal government could subsidize
the matching funds in order to ensure that someone fills the job. By doing this, the federal
government is essentially providing tribes with a free lawyer at half the cost to themselves. Since
they would be competing with virtually every other public interest firm in the country, the
federal government will need to publicize this information and provide incentives for people to
pursue fellowships on Indian reservations. Extending the above loan forgiveness program to
include people on one-year fellowships would be a tremendous start. The lack of attorneys in
Indian Country is a crisis that needs a quick and swift response.

IV. Why Should We Invest?
This all sounds like a huge investment by the federal government. What obligation does the
federal government have to invest this much money to help an entity comply with an act that it
passed? In Seminole Nation v. United States57, the Court stated that “[u]nder a humane and self
imposed policy which has found expression in many acts of Congress and numerous decisions of
this Court, it has charged itself with moral obligations of the highest responsibility and trust58.”
Inherent in this trust responsibility is the notion that the federal government should look out for
the best interest of tribes. As outlined above, tribes are currently going through a crisis that
threatens the safety of their citizens. The fix to this problem will require tremendous expense on
behalf of the federal government and an actual honoring of the trust responsibility. The federal
government has a responsibility to look out for the best interests of tribes and ensure their
citizens are safe.
V. Summary and Conclusion
The best and most efficient way to address the shortage of lawyers in Indian Country is to
create a unit within an existing governmental agency that deals exclusively with providing
lawyers to Indian tribes. This agency could be created with legislation that will fully fund it for
five years, after which a study will be done that will measure its effectiveness. The results of this
study will inform Congress as to whether or not the agency can be renewed. Through its initial
legislation, the agency will be endowed with funds that it will disburse to tribes to assist with the
salary and benefits of attorneys. It will also fund and oversee the loan forgiveness programs that will be created. In regards to hiring judges, the agency will directly employ the judges and assign
them to culturally sensitive circuits. The judges will rotate within that circuit.

The agency would also create a website that will allow participating tribes to advertise
positions and take applications. While it will not act as a hiring agency, it will collect and
disburse applications to tribes as they are requested. Once an attorney is hired, the agency will
also fund any applicable training that the applicant might need, particularly in regards to passing
any tribal bar exams. The agency will also use the aforementioned field offices as means to
providing support to attorneys, who will almost certainly be working in very rural conditions.
It is important that we create programs that addressing the sexual assault epidemic in Indian
Country. By creating a streamlined process for tribes to recruit and pay attorneys and judges, we
can begin to give tribes the tools they need to address this issue. 47 Black Hills State University Communications, Chief Justice Gilbertson discusses efforts to attract attorneys to state’s rural communities, BHSU News and Events, Oct. 18, 2013 http://www.bhsu.edu/AboutBHSU/NewsEvents/tabid/3454/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/5099/Chief- Justice-Gilbertson-discusses-efforts-to-attract-attorneys-to-states-rural-communities.aspx48 Id.49 NALP Bulletin, New Findings on Salaries for Public Interest Attorneys, The Association for Legal Career Professionals, Sept. 2010 http://www.nalp.org/sept2010pubintsal50 Snapshot of Salary and Additional Benefits, Teach for America, http://www.teachforamerica.org/why-teach-for- america/compensation-and-benefits (last visited May 5, 2014)51 Investing in Leaders, Teach for America, http://www.teachforamerica.org/our-mission/investing-in-leaders (last visited May 5, 2014)52 Study Finds Teach For America Teachers Stay in the Classroom Past Initial Commitment, Harvard Graduate School of Education (May 21, 2008), http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2008/05/21_project.php 53 Id.54 Public Service Loan Forgiveness, U.S. Dep’t of Education, https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness- cancellation/charts/public-service (last visited May 5, 2014)55 Defined as 150% of the poverty line minus your salary.56 Loan Repayment, Indian Health Services, https://www.ihs.gov/loanrepayment/ (last visited May 5, 2014)57 316 U.S. 286 (1942) 58 Id. at 296-97

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Yesterday - I began posting, in three parts, a paper that I wrote in law school where I analyzed how the rural lawyer shortage is endangering public safety in tribal communities by preventing tribes from exercising the supplemental jurisdiction offered by the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The paper was written in early 2014 so I apologize for any anachronisms, I've tried to correct them where I could. As I said yesterday, I was re-reading it and thought that the information contained within was very important to share and a great illustration of WHY the rural lawyer shortage is such a big problem. Part I is available here

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II. Exploring The Difficulties
The interplay between financial and locational resources will help influence what solutions
the tribes should take in addressing these concerns. The solving of the sexual assault epidemic
will first require figuring out how to solve these difficulties in order to take advantage of the
enhanced sovereignty offered through the act. The solution to these problems will require in-
depth analysis of historical and current issues facing tribes.
a. The Financial Problem
The paltry funding given by the Tribal Law and Order Act essentially leaves tribes with
an unfunded opt-in. They are essentially given the option to take part in a program that can
provide them with more rights, but at a cost that can be prohibitively expensive. Entities that
already struggle with providing even the basic necessities are expected to pay even more money
to hire people that will allow them to comply with the act so they can begin to exercise the
enhanced sovereignty that will allow them to begin the crime epidemic that is currently plaguing
the reservation.

Many tribes also struggle to even have the basic structures that will allow them to exert
jurisdiction, and many of these tribes will struggle to pay for the law trained people that will
allow them to be in compliance with the act. For example, many tribes lack even a court system.
The lack of a court system could be an indicator of the lack of capital to undertake such an
endeavor. Creating a court system requires paying to research and develop strategies for
implementing a court into your current governmental structure. For these tribes, complying with
this act will be prohibitively expensive and very difficult (if not impossible). For tribes with
court systems, complying will still represent a great financial burden.
Some tribes will be able to tap into gaming revenue in order to fund expansion of
services. Many are familiar with the Seminole, Mohegan and Pequot and their successes with
generating revenue through gaming. However, these tribes are generally the exception to the
rule. Many tribes are unable to engage in profitable gaming enterprises and for these tribes,
gaming will never be an option to raise revenue. For many tribes, gaming may be their only
option for economic development, a reality which has been accepted by both the Courts and
Congress. In Chemehuevi Indian Tribe v. Wilson, the Court stated, “Congress recognized that for
many tribes, gaming income ‘often means the difference between an adequate governmental
program and a skeletal program that is totally dependent on Federal funding.27”
For tribes who have gaming, it has also not been significantly successful in increasing
tribal governmental revenue and many struggle to even break even with their gaming
enterprises28. In fact, even for tribes who are able to raise money through gaming, the revenue has started to decline29. In order to generate the revenue needed to pay for law trained attorneys
and judges, tribes will have to diversify their economic development and generate additional
funding.

To examine the difficulty that tribes often have in generating revenue and the difficult
choices that come with a limited budget, we can look to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home
of Oglala Sioux. Located in rural South Dakota, economic development can be prohibitively
difficult for the tribe. Many tribes who successfully rely on economic development are either
located in heavily populated regions (such as the Northeast) or have abundant natural resources.
Pine Ridge in located in an area that has neither. In 2012, the Oglala Sioux had a budget of $80
million, $70 million of which came from the federal government30. This dependency on federal
funding results in the tribe not having much budget leeway. For example, when the automatic
spending cuts (negotiated through a previous debt ceiling deal) took effect on March 1st, tribes all
over the country had to grapple with the fact that while the federal government exempted many
of the programs that benefit the poor, they did not exercise the same care for programs that
benefit American Indians31. Because of the automatic spending cuts, the tribe had to cut not only
services to children and the elderly but also their tribal police force32. The inability to supply a
sufficient police force is troubling enough, but expecting them to be able to hire additional lawyers would be wrong. Putting additional requirements on a tribe in that financial predicament
can result in them being unable to fill that gap.

It is without dispute that tribes in the same situation as the Oglala Sioux are going to
encounter an insurmountable amount of trouble raising enough revenue to comply with the act.
For tribes already dependent on federal government, they are certainly unable to find the
additional money needed to comply with the act. These tribes also face the geographical
challenges that make engaging in economic development prohibitively difficult.
b. Attracting Attorneys
Even assuming that tribes were able to find the financial resources needed to hire
attorneys, they would still face incredible difficulty attracting qualified candidates to assume the
available positions. It should come as perhaps no surprise that the population of the United States
is urbanizing and that the population of educated young professionals is urbanizing at an even
faster rate than the rest of the American population. In many metropolitan areas, the center city
population of young educated professionals is growing at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the
metropolitan area33. Young educated people are also moving to certain types of cities, ones that
are often based on a high-tech economy or that are young, vibrant college towns34. The legal
profession is also urbanizing at a rate that is leaving rural areas as a whole behind. This problem
has been noted as far back as the late 90s35. It should be much of a stretch to figure out why both of these trends would pose significant problems for tribes and their ability to attract young
professionals to want to move to and work on the reservation.

Indian reservations are often located in the most remote parts of the United States and are
hardly boom towns. Some of the most crushing poverty in the country can be found on Indian
reservations. In fact, poverty on Indian reservations is so pervasive that it cannot be measured by
the standard poverty rate definition that is often cited in studies to define how impoverished an
area is. Reservations also have high rates of “extreme poverty,” which for a family of four is
defined as making under $11,000 per year36. The number of people in extreme poverty on
reservations is four times the national average37. Further, many citizens lack what many of us
would consider basic amenities; fourteen percent lack electricity and twenty percent lack running
water38. Perhaps the best way to fully understand the conditions on the impoverished reservations
is to look at an actual example. In 2013, Washington Post reported on conditions on the Fort
Peck Indian Reservation in Montana and described conditions in its populous city by stating that
“[s]tray dogs wander the streets ... [it]has a few tiny markets, a bar and several gas stations. The
streets are littered with the charred remains of buildings because there is no money to clear away
debris after a fire39.” These conditions are in stark contrast to what the average young, educated
professional is looking for in a new place.
The extreme poverty also feeds into other issues, as briefly touched above when the
expense of hiring lawyers was discussed. The extreme nature of the poverty on reservations makes it so tribes cannot afford to provide basic services to their citizens. The inability to collect
sufficient tax revenue creates a situation where funding is often short. The sector where this
problem is most apparent and where it will be difficult to retain people long term is the
education. When people look for a place to start a family, they often look to see what the local
schools. Schools on Indian reservations are underfunded and heavily reliant on the federal
government to subsidize what the local school board cannot. The average school in the United
States receives only ten percent of its funding from the federal government, for a reservation
school however, this number can be as high sixty percent40. A study conducted in 2003 by the
United States Commission on Civil Rights found that Native students often face “deteriorating
school facilities, underpaid teachers, weak curricula, discriminatory treatment [and] outdated
learning tools41.”

There are other issues that would be problematic for attracting young people to move to
the reservation. Housing is another great example of a barrier that tribes might encounter. In
2003, it was found that forty percent of reservation housing was considered inadequate, this
compares unfavorably with just six percent nationwide42. A shortage of adequate housing would
certainly hinder a place’s ability to make itself look appealing to new residents, particularly those
who may have options elsewhere.
It is next important to consider where tribes are located and how that might pose a
challenge to recruiting lawyers. Reservations are predominantly located west of Mississippi
River, in the rural Southwest and Plains and far away from metropolitan areas. In the western
half of the country, the remoteness is exacerbated by the population distribution of the United States. The Plains are sparsely populated and you could easily be a full day’s drive away from a
major metropolitan area. In their attempts to attract lawyers, tribes will have to consider many of
the struggles that other rural areas face when trying to attract lawyers.

Spatial isolation is a major barrier to overcome and functions as an additional barrier to
tribes. As outlined above, young professionals are not just moving to urbanized areas, but are
moving to center cities with a certain cultural vibe. Reservations are often located in far rural
places that do not offer the same kind of lifestyle that one can find in a center city. It seem
obvious that rural South Dakota or Montana would not offer the same nightlife and socialization
opportunities as high tech cities like San Francisco or Raleigh or college towns like Ann Arbor
or Madison. The legal profession as a whole is struggling with attracting lawyers to rural areas.
Even in predominantly rural states, a majority of lawyers are clustered in just a few metropolitan
areas43. For example, in Georgia, seventy percent of lawyers are in the Atlanta metropolitan
area44. This of course leaves just thirty percent of the lawyer population for the rest of the state.
In South Dakota, there are entire counties without lawyers, a situation which forces many clients
to travel hours just to meet with legal counsel45. In that state, sixty five percent of lawyers are in
the state’s sixty five metropolitan areas46. This points to the fact that lawyers are increasingly
deciding that working for a firm in a city is preferable to working in rural America, a trend which
will prove troubling to Indian tribes because they are competing for a small pool of lawyers. 27 Matthew Fletcher, Tribal Economic Development: Nuts & Bolts, Michigan State University College of Law Indigenous Law and Policy Center Working Paper Series, Oct. 25, 2006 at 3-4 (citing Chemehuevi Indian Tribe v. Wilson, 987 F. Supp. 804, 808 n. 4 (N.D. Cal. 1997))28 Id.29 Stephen Singer, Report: Revenue growth slows at Indian casinos, falls behind non-tribal properties, Reno Gazette-Journal, Mar. 26, 2014 http://www.rgj.com/story/money/gaming/2014/03/26/report-revenue-growth- slows-at-indian-casinos-falls-behind-non-tribal-properties/6918583/30 Annie Lowrey, Pain on the Reservation, N.Y. Times, July 12, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/business/economy/us-budget-cuts-fall-heavily-on-american- indians.html?pagewanted=all&_r=031 Id. 32 Id.33 Morgan Brennan, Downtowns: What's Behind America's Most Surprising Real Estate Boom, Forbes, Mar. 25, 2013 http://www.forbes.com/sites/morganbrennan/2013/03/25/emerging-downtowns-u-s-cities-revitalizing- business-districts-to-lure-young-professionals/34 William Frey, Young Adults Choose "Cool Cities" During Recession, Brookings Institute, Oct. 28, 2011 http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2011/10/28-young-adults-frey35 Steven R. Sorenson, If They Won't Come, We've Failed, Wis. Law., APRIL 1998, at 536 Native reservations: poorest places in the country, Liberation, June 20, 2012http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/newspaper/vol-6-no-9/native-reservations-poorest.html37 Id.38 Id.39 Lyndsey Layton, In Montana, an Indian reservation’s children feel the impact of sequester’s cuts, Wash. Post, Mar. 21, 2013 http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-montana-an-indian-reservations-children-feel- the-impact-of-sequesters-cuts/2013/03/21/90b61722-916e-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html40 Id.41 A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country, U.S. Comm’n on Civil Rights xi (2003) 42 Id. at 50

Saturday, February 17, 2018

After viewing "Sovereignty," a play that dealt with Cherokee history and focused on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and the expansion of tribal sovereignty that is made possible by it, I decided to dig up an old paper that I wrote for an independent study while in law school. This paper is about 4 years old so I apologize for any anachronisms that are present, I tried to correct them where I could. This paper looked at how the rural lawyer shortage can hinder the ability of tribes to avail themselves of the expanded sovereignty that VAWA provides for. The paper looks at the problem from the side of lack of resources for tribes and also the the inherent difficulty that all rural spaces face in attracting young lawyers to move there. This is perhaps the best example of how the rural lawyer shortage has created a public safety crisis. I am sharing here to increase awareness about this issue and because after re-reading it, I felt that the information was too important to not be made available in some venue.I have decided to keep the original footnotes in order to preserve the paper as much as possible and allow my audience to check my data. I apologize in advance for the deviation from my usual posting format. This is part 1 of 3. I hope you enjoy. ---

I. Introduction to Tribal Jurisdiction
The right of a sovereign to make and enforce its laws is foundational to its existence. The
structural integrity of the system is bolstered only by the trust of people who exist within its
sphere. After all, the United States of America is nothing but a collection of sovereigns co-
existing under a hierarchical but yet confusing system. Many Americans are familiar with the
rights afforded to the federal government, states, counties and towns, but fewer are familiar with
the rights of tribes. In Cherokee v. Georgia1, Chief Justice John Marshall defined tribes as
“domestic, dependent nations” that exist outside of the influence of the states, but yet are
“dependent” upon the United States government. Despite being affirmed as quasi sovereign
nations by the United States Supreme Court, tribes have historically encountered barriers to
making and enforcing their own laws. All three branches of government have waged war on the
rights of Indian tribes to exercise the most fundamental right afforded to a sovereign, the ability
to make and enforce laws. This process has resulted in a lack of trust in their system and the
degradation of their rights as a sovereign entity.
At particular issue is the right of tribes to assert criminal jurisdiction over crimes within their
lands. In Ex parte Crow Dog2, the Supreme Court held that tribes had exclusive jurisdiction over
crimes committed by Indians against other Indians on tribal land. Congress responded to this by passing the Major Crimes Act3, which placed the right to try and punish certain crimes within the
jurisdiction of the federal government. The Supreme Court upheld this intrusion into tribal
sovereignty with United States v. Kagama4, which established that tribal rights exist at the mercy
of the federal government and can be diminished or even eradicated at any time. Over the next
century, the federal government would continue to take away the right of tribes to exercise even
the most basic rights of a sovereign entity. When the question of the tribe’s rights to exercise
tribal jurisdiction over non-members came up in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe5, the
Supreme Court said that tribes lack criminal sovereignty over non-Indians without explicit
permission from Congress, this logic was extended further in Duro v. Reina6when the Supreme
Court held that tribes lack jurisdiction over non-member Indians. In the latter case, Congress
almost immediately fixed it by passing a law which extended tribal jurisdictions to all Indians.
What was not fixed however was the gap that did not allow tribes to prosecute non-Indians who
commit crimes on the Reservation.

a. Sexual Assault on the Reservation
According to the United States Department of Justice, Native American women are two and
a half times more likely to be sexual assaulted than a non-Native and one in three will be
sexually assaulted in their lifetime7. The sexual assault epidemic on Indian reservations is the
product of a perfect storm of factors: the Major Crimes Act8placing rape as one of the major crimes under which the federal government can assert jurisdiction over Indian defendants, the
provision of the Indian Civil Rights Act9that limits tribal courts to one year sentences and the
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe10 decision which stripped tribes of the right to prosecute
non-Indians for crimes committed on the reservation.

For a non-Indian, a reservation represents a place where they have virtual free reign. The
only jurisdiction that can prosecute them for their crimes is the federal government and the task
for doing this often falls in the laps of often overworked US Attorney's offices that are often
located in distant cities far away from the confines of the reservation. According to a policy brief
prepared by the National Congress of American Indians in 2013, 67% of Native sexual assault
victims describe their attacker as non-Native11. These are people over whom the tribe has no
jurisdiction whatsoever, they cannot be prosecuted by the tribe for assault or any other related
offense. These men are also not strangers who are wandering onto the reservation and then
leaving. According to the same policy brief cited above, 39% of Native women will be subjected
to sexual violence by a romantic partner and in 71% of instances of sexual assault, the
perpetrator is known to the victim12. 46% of reservation residents are also non-Native13.The jurisdictional black hole that exists has historically had to be filled by the federal
government. This is problematic for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is the
spatial isolation that exists for many tribes. Indian reservations are often located in the most
remote locations in the country and are often hundreds of miles away from the closest U.S. Attorney’s Office. There are some instances however where a closer jurisdiction can assert
control. In Public Law 280 states, the state authorities can assert jurisdiction over crimes
committed on reservations but these states are the minority and far from the norm. The inability
of tribes to assert jurisdiction differ from the situation present in most locales where the county
prosecutor (often located within very close proximity) can prosecute the crime. In 2013, the
Department of Justice found that only 69% of criminal cases referred by tribes to the federal
government were actually prosecuted14. The problem however is that there is no recourse for
tribes when the federal government declines to prosecute. Citing previous data, the New York
Times found that only one-third of sexual assault cases are actually prosecuted by the federal
government15.

b. Congress Responds
In 2010, Congress responded to many of the problems outlined above by passing the Tribal
Law and Order Act. The act authorized tribes to sentence a defendant to up to three years for
each offense committed (to a maximum of nine total years)16. However, this provision did not
immediately apply to all tribes. In order to take advantage of the enhanced sentencing provision,
tribes have to meet certain guidelines. First of all, they have to be able to provide counsel to
defendants that meet certain competency standards17. For indigent defendants, the tribe must (at
their own expense) provide counsel that are licensed in a jurisdiction whose standards ensure
“competence and professional responsibility18.” Finally, the tribes must be able to provide law-trained judges to preside over the proceedings19. Tribes that unable to meet these guidelines are
required to continue to adhere to the sentencing restrictions established under ICRA. Given the
huge expenses involved, the Tribal Law and Order Act is hardly a cure all or the enhancement to
tribal sovereignty that it appears to be.

The Tribal Law and Order Act also did not address one of the most pressing problems in
Indian Country: crimes committed by non-Indian defendants. The provisions of the Tribal Law
and Order Act only spoke to crimes committed by Natives and did not authorize tribes to
exercise jurisdiction over non-Indian defendants. In 2013 however, President Obama signed into
the law the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Contained within the
bill is a provision that allows tribes to exercise jurisdiction over non-Indian defendants who
commit crimes against Indian victims with whom they are in an intimate relationship20. There are
of course the following limitations: “[the defendant must be someone who] (a) resides in Indian
country (b) is employed in Indian country, or (c) is the spouse, intimate partner, or dating partner
of an Indian living in Indian country or a Tribal member21.” There are also certain requirements
that tribes must meet in order to exercise this extra jurisdiction, many of these requirements are
similar to what was prescribed in the Tribal Law and Order act. For example, tribes must be able
to provide competent counsel for indigent defendants and have trials presided over by law
trained judges22.

c. The Difficulty with Compliance
While both of the pieces of legislation outlined above are major victories for tribal
sovereignty, they also provide tribes with a mandate that may prove difficult to meet. Tribes can
only take advantage of the provisions outlined in the Tribal Law and Order and Violence Against
Women Acts if they can provide for law trained judges and be able to afford counsel for indigent
defendants. It is no secret that Indian reservations are some of the most impoverished places in
the country. In order to comply with the act, tribes have to expend a significant amount of
revenue to hire law trained lawyers and judges. The Tribal Law and Order Act did provide some
additional funding to tribes to pursue hiring law trained judges and advocates. The Act allowed
the Legal Services Corporation to provide grants to tribes and other entities that serve defendants
in Indian Country to fund the defense of criminal defendants23. However, it does not provide for
grants to legal services for anything above a misdemeanor offense24. It does provides grants to
tribes (outside of the LSC framework) to hire defense council and other “tribal court
personnel25.” However, the funding is paltry compared to the funding allocated to the other
provisions of the Tribal Law and Order Act26.
Tribes may also encounter difficulties that are external to their financial resources. Since the
statute requires that tribes be able to provide law trained judges and lawyers, it is important that
tribes be able to make their reservations appealing places to live for law school graduates.
Attracting lawyers to live in rural South Dakota, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or northern
Maine is a challenge in and of itself. Tribes not only have to expend revenue to pay the salaries and benefits of the law trained people that they hire, but they also have to pay to provide
amenities that would make their reservation competitive with other places that a lawyer may
decide to live. Reservations are not only competing with urban areas, but even other rural areas
that may lure a potential lawyer away. The cost of hiring a team of lawyers can go far beyond the
face value of salaries and benefits but can extend into a value far beyond what was originally
expected.

In his sparsely settled community in the agricultural countryside of southern Iowa, "there's just no motivation for people to go" to college, says Gordon, who's now a senior at the University of Iowa.

"When they're ready to be done with high school, they think, 'That's all the school I need, and I'm just going to go and find a job.' " That job, Gordon explains, might be on the family farm or at the egg-packaging plant or the factory that makes pulleys and conveyor belts, or driving trucks that haul grain.

Variations of this mindset, among many other reasons, have given rise to a reality that has gotten lost in the impassioned debate over who gets to go to college, which often focuses on racial and ethnic minorities and students from low-income families: The high school graduates who head off to campus in the lowest proportions in America are the ones from rural places.

Here are some sobering data points to provide context for the profile. While 62% of urban high school graduates and 67% of suburban high school graduates go to college, just 59% of rural ones do--that's all races, at every income level. Nationally, 42% of those aged 18 to 24 are enrolled in higher education, but the figure is just 29% of rural folks, compared to 48% from cities.

I've noticed the media paying more attention to the rural education gap since Election 2016. That's got to be a good thing.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

This overview paragraph is from Dave Weigel's piece in the Washington Post on Democrat Margaret Good's win in the race for Florida's 72d congressional race yesterday, a seat based in Sarasota:

But for years, Democrats had been spending little, and losing more — nearly 1,000 state legislative seats, many gerrymandered further out of reach after the party was routed in 2010. Starting last year, they’ve seen money and volunteers flood the sort of local races where the party had been wiped out during Barack Obama’s presidency. In many of the races they’ve lost, they’ve erased most of Republicans’ margins, often with the same pattern — strong Democratic turnout in suburbs and a Republican fade in rural voting. In an average of legislative races, Democrats have seen a 11.9 percent swing since 2016 results.

I've not yet posted about the extensive coverage given to Representative Cheri Bustos's (Democrat-IL) report with recommendations on how the Democrats can take back seats in the Midwest. Read more about that report here (In These Times), here (Politico), and here (NPR). In These Times coverage by John Collins includes this description of the report:

Hope From the Heartland: How Democrats Can Better Serve the Midwest by Bringing Rural, Working Class Wisdom to Washington compiles interviews with 72 current or former Democratic officials who, in recent years, won over their rural constituents despite the national popularity of the Republican opposition. According to the report, these were candidates who “bucked the trend and succeeded in the rural Midwest, now dominated by Republicans.”

In the interview with Bustos on NPR, she was asked if she was "suggesting that Democrats went too far in their backing on issues like gay marriage or transgender rights" and whether "that has been part of the [Democrats'] problem." She responded:

Well, I don't think we should ever lose sight of fighting for the people who need us to fight for them, whether it's, you know, the LGBTQ community or whether it's communities of color. You know, we're Democrats, and we fight for people and for better lives for families.

But what I'm saying is that we need to stay relentlessly and I - you know, just keep our eyes on the ball for economic recovery in areas that have yet to see it. You know, when we say that we're the big-tent party, you know, that doesn't mean that you leave one group outside pounding the stakes and you let other people - you let them in the tent. When we say we're the big-tent party, we've got to be inclusive, and we've got to fight for everybody. And that includes people in the heartland who have gone through some tough times.

This Bustos-led report was also mentioned in a podcast on This American Life. One striking thing about that episode was Bustos coaching a female candidate for office not to play up her college education given that many voters in the district were not similarly educated.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

By now, most of you are probably familiar with President Donald Trump's proposal to at least partially replace the SNAP program with a food delivery service that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has compared to "Blue Apron." There have already been many criticisms of this proposal and the fact that it will take away the right of SNAP recipients to choose their own meals and subject them to eating whatever food the government sees fit to provide them. After all, Mulvaney defended the proposal by saying that one of its benefits is that the government will be able to negotiate prices on the wholesale market. What Trump however is proposing is not an entirely new program. The federal government already delivers pre-boxed food to families on tribal reservations all over the country. Consider that the federal government has not conducted a nationally representative study of that program since 1989, a fact that is quite troubling.

One of the most overlooked aspects of this proposal is the impact that it will have on low-income economies, particularly in isolated rural communities. With the federal government at least partially assuming responsibility for delivering food to SNAP recipients, money will be lost from local economies. As I covered in a previous post, SNAP has a measurable economic impact. A SNAP recipient is likely going to spend their dollars in local stores, which employ local people. Even those who spend their dollars at big box retailers are still contributing to keeping an employer in the local community, which helps to keep people employed.

According to the Center on Budgeting and Policy Priorities, over 80 percent of SNAP authorized retailers are small businesses. For many of these small businesses, revenue generated from sales to SNAP recipients may be quite significant. In fact, we already have examples of towns whose economies have been significantly boosted by revenue generated from SNAP. According to a study published by the United States Department of Agriculture, each $5 of SNAP generated approximately $9 of community spending. After all, when a person buys something at a store, their dollars continue to work its way through the economy. If you want a more detailed explanation, feel free to visit this link.

By fundamentally changing a program that generates positive economic outcomes for impoverished communities, the Trump Administration is setting many communities up for failure. The impact of this proposal goes beyond the people who are receiving SNAP. Consider the economic impacts of the SNAP program and how it helps local business owners employ people in the community. If SNAP is cut and fewer dollars flow into a business then the business owner may have to lay people off or even close his business. The quality of life then also goes down for people in the surrounding community, especially in rural communities. Many rural communities are not exactly awash with options so losing a neighborhood grocery store could result in substantially longer drives to do simple things like grocery shopping, which can represent an additional hurdle for low-income people. The lack of a grocery store in the community may also affect their ability to attract new businesses, which often want access to basic amenities. Further, if a retailer is thinking of expanding into a community and sees examples of prior failures, they may be more reluctant to open up a location there. The end result of all of this is a weaker rural economy and a worsening of the rural:urban gap.

As you can see, changing SNAP is akin to knocking down a domino, it starts a chain reaction that can have a potentially disastrous effect on a local economy. It is my hope that President Trump and Director Mulvaney reconsider this project but if they do not, I hope that Congress decides to not pursue it.